LACEY - A Camden-based company specializing in nuclear and solar energy intends to purchase Oyster Creek Generating Station and decommission the nuclear plant in eight years, more than half a century earlier than previously planned.

The deal will transfer ownership of Oyster Creek to Camden-based Holtec International. The company will also take over the plant's spent nuclear waste and its decommissioning trust fund, worth more than $982 million. Exelon, the plant's current parent company, estimated decommissioning and site restoration costs would near $1.4 billion.

The deal is expected to be finalized sometime in 2019, but needs approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities.

Exelon officials said the purchase will not impact current decommissioning activities. The plant is scheduled to stop generating electricity Sept. 17. Watch the videos above to learn more.

“This landmark agreement is good news for Oyster Creek employees, the Lacey community and the state of New Jersey,” Exelon chief's nuclear officer Bryan Hanson said in a news release. “Holtec’s commitment to the nuclear industry and its presence in New Jersey will allow many of our employees previously facing relocation to continue living and working in the Garden State."

Exelon's original plan including storing the plant for more than a half-century to allow radiation levels to drop and its trust fund to accrue more money before taking down the facility.

Holtec's ownership will speed up the process. The company intends to hire Comprehensive Decommissioning International (CDI), a joint venture company of Holtec and engineering and nuclear waste management firm SNC-Lavalin, to help decontaminate and decommission the plant. Terms of the sale agreement require CDI to offer jobs to current Oyster Creek decommissioning employees.

Holtec’s President and CEO Kris Singh said in a news release that the company will use the latest technologies to preserve the shore near the plant and minimize radiation exposure to workers.

Oyster Creek currently has 34 canisters of spent radioactive fuel at its facility, D'Ambrosio said. More fuel remains in the reactor and cooling pool.

The federal government has yet to move forward with plans to create a permanent repository for nuclear waste; a previous project to build such a facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, stalled before completion.

Jeff Tittel, chapter director the New Jersey Sierra Club talks about his concerns about Oyster Creek, the plant's decommission, and what radioactive waste on the site could mean for the future, at the New Jersey Sierra Club office in Trenton, NJ Tuesday January 17, 2017. Tanya Breen

Lacey Township resident Regina Discenza is shown during a Thursday afternoon, May 11, 2017, interview in the township. She expressed concern about the town’s tax rate when the Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant (shown in the background) closes. Thomas P. Costello

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Lacey Mayor Nicholas Juliano said he was shocked to learn of the prospective sale Tuesday morning, but had already met with Holtec officials. The five-member Township Committee will be meeting Wednesday morning to discuss the impacts of the plan, he said.

"Eight years? I don’t know,” he said of Holtec's decommissioning plan.

Juliano said decommissioning Oyster Creek sooner than expected raises questions about the tax impact on the town over the next decade. Exelon is the township's largest commercial taxpayer, contributing about $2.5 million in property taxes annually. Hosting the plant also earns Lacey another $11 million.

U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., is advocating for Lacey residents, urging Congress to pass bills that would establish repositories for the nuclear waste and give financial compensation to towns like this one, which for now are stuck with the spent fuel and waste.

“They should get paid for storing the rods because the federal government has failed to permanently store them as was expected," MacArthur told the Press in a phone interview.

“I’m going to help them in any way I can, to get them to a new future for Lacey," he said.

Environmentalists expressed mixed feelings about the plan.

“There’s good and bad with this," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.

Taking the plant down more quickly than its original decommissioning schedule reduces some of its environmental risks, Tittel said. For example, early closure means dangerous radioactive fuel rods will spend less time in cooling pools and will be moved into safer, dry storage at a faster pace, he said. Also, the possibility of the plant or waste storage areas being flooding during a future storm will be reduced, he added.

But Tittel remained skeptical about another company taking over what has been, so far, Exelon's responsibility for cleanup and safety.

With Holtec, "we (at the Sierra Club) don’t have the same kind of knowledge and relationship," he said.

Janet Tauro, chairwoman of the New Jersey chapter of Clean Water Action, also worried about another company taking control of the site and its waste. Tauro wants Gov. Phil Murphy to appoint a safety oversight board to the plant and the decommissioning process.

“There isn’t a technology that exists on earth at this time that can deal with this highly radioactive waste for thousands of years," she said. "That is the very unfortunate, unvarnished truth.”